Day 42: A few thoughts on friendships
Today I thought a lot about the issue of the title, and I’d like to write down a couple of ideas. But first, a few words about the day.
It was quite a long day — over 28 kilometers with a thousand meters of elevation gain. The morning went smoothly until we reached a road we had considered taking yesterday to get to Lake Hughes. After a break, the trail immediately resumed a steep ascent, and the sun emerged from the morning fog. Last night, we camped amidst the clouds and we woke up with the tent soaked. Moreover, given the wind last night, I had set my tent up in low mode, meaning less space available for air circulation. But the issue was the extreme humidity (and the dew point1).
After a few kilometers of climbing, we walked through a 2013’s burn zone: the same bleak environment we’ve become accustomed to. Burnt dead trees that sometimes regenerate from their roots in shrub form; it will take decades before the environment returns to something similar to what it was (if it doesn’t all burn again before then). In this wasteland, colonizing plants like the dreaded “poodle-dog bush” take over and grow undisturbed. Today, it was easy to get distracted and accidentally touch one. Sometimes it was like swimming in a sea jellyfishes.
This morning I spent some time reflecting (again) on an idea about friendship that I’d like to share with others. There are some relationships that I think one could call transactional: I do this because you did that. I reply because you wrote to me. Here’s the thing: I don’t believe these can be called close friendships, because of this tendency of doing something only in response to something else. Instead, friendship is (or should be) a spontaneous behavior; there’s no need for a reason to write “How are you? Would you like to share something with me?” to a friend. Why should there be? How easy is it to record a voice message to say that I’m angry or disappointed or happy or dissatisfied or anything else? And I do it because I know there’s someone who will listen. I find it hard to believe that people say they don’t have time. Does that mean I demand their attention constantly? No, everyone has their own life, but I certainly expect a behavior from people I call “friends”. And yet, I find myself let down by my own expectations. Maybe I should reassess them and not be disappointed by certain people’s behavior. It’s our actions that define and show what truly matters to us.
The physicist’s corner: the dew point is the temperature at which, at a certain pressure, the atmosphere becomes saturated with water vapor. A high dew point will likely lead to a foggy day.↩